Dismissal

When the Supreme Court began its 2022-23 term this past Monday, black Americans celebrated the investiture of Ketanji Brown Jackson as an associate justice of the Court and called it an historic breakthrough.  A black woman was sitting on the Court for the first time!  She gives black women a voice on the highest court in the land.  What a joyous occasion!

Forget it, sistas.  The fact that Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first black woman on the Supreme Court is as monumental as Geraldine Ferraro becoming the first woman on a national ticket of a major party.  It doesn't . . . matter. 

Geraldine Ferraro, though the 1984 Democratic nominee for Vice President, not only wasn't elected Vice President, she couldn't get elected to anything after that.  Ketanji Brown Jackson is on the Court, she wasn't passed over, and she achieved what Geraldine Ferraro didn't - getting a seat at the table - but it doesn't matter because, in the end, she's still a liberal jurist on a court dominated by right-wingers. 

Yes, she argued forcefully for the parameters of the Clean Water Act concerning wetlands, as they are the sources of many of our rivers, and yesterday she explained how race-neutral districting denies minorities representation because while the districts may be race-neutral, the population distribution in the states is, well, not. She doesn't have to tell that to people who already get that.  She has to persuade the conservative supermajority on the Court.  Not going to happen.  And her most eloquent argument against the independent state legislature theory will likely not stop the right-wing supermajority from decided that the Constitution, giving the states the right to decided how to pick presidential electors any way they please, can nullify the popular vote for President on the mere suspicion of fraud and pick the electors the people did not choose.

And when martial law is declared by the Dear Leader Republicans put in the White House in January 2025, Ketanji Brown Jackson's distinction as the first black woman on the Supreme Court will hardly matter when she's arrested as an enemy of the state.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

With her confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice by the full United States Senate, Ketanji Brown Jackson made history.

She's the first Protestant to join the Court since 1981. 😃

Oh yeah, and the first black woman to join the Court, as well as the third black justice overall (unless noted Oreo cookie Clarence Thomas doesn't count).   I'm sure she will be a very prudent justice and offer wise counsel and opinions for years.  For much of that time, though, she'll be in the minority, as that six-member conservative bloc is bound to come down on the side of corporations, polluters (the same thing as corporations, really), evangelicals, gun-rights advocates, homophobic bakery owners, and transsexual-haters with an iron fist (although Chief Justice John Roberts will likely surprise us, though Clarence Thomas won't).  She'll only have two women on her side, and neither one of them will be Amy Coney Barrett.  The 47 Senate Republicans who voted against Mrs. Jackson (and walked out of the Senate chamber once Mrs. Jackson was confirmed) have promised to deny President Biden a nomination to fill a second Supreme Court vacancy if the GOP wins back the Senate in November, and they plan to ensure a right-wing majority that will be set in concrete.

And a Republican Congress will likely try to impeach and remove Mrs. Jackson.  

Come October 3, she will have a rocky road ahead of her.

The Scariest People in the World

I saw as much of the Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court confirmation hearings as I could take.  After a few minutes of it, it became apparent that the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were doing what comes naturally too them - trying to railroad a black woman for being responsible for  all of the cultural and societal failings of the world by, including but not limited to, representing terrorists in court, going leniently on child-porn offenders, being soft on crime overall, and possibly buying Mary J. Blige records when she was in college. 

Many of these GOP senators, in addition to a couple of current and former governors and a former President, are hoping to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and they used these confirmation  hearings to show the right-wing base just how much they hate black women too.   Among the senators expected to run, along with a current governor and the previous President, are:  

Tom Cotton

Ted Cruz

Ron DeSantis

Josh Hawley

Marco Rubio

Donald Trump

I didn't have to think long for a list that was just as scary as that. It was the VIP list at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, which reads as follows:

Hans Frank

Joseph Goebbels 

Hermann Göring

Rudolf Hess

Heinrich Himmler

Adolf Hitler

When people talk about fascism taking over America, this is what they mean. And if - when? - America's homegrown Nazis goose-step their way down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, being the smartest person on the Supreme Court won't help Justice-to-be Jackson much. 😨

My apologies to Joe Queenan for ripping off his joke comparing the Nuremberg Rally VIP list to the cast of St. Elmo's Fire. 

Who You Callin' a Pedophile Lover?

You wouldn't call you mama that!

Sorry, I got carried away trying to emulate a sista when I'm not even a brutha, and as I am being politically incorrect, I'll stop there.  But black women won't, now that U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has labeled Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as being too lenient on child pornographers.

"Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker," Hawley said on Twitter. "She's been advocating for it since law school. This goes beyond 'soft on crime.'  I'm concerned that this a record that endangers our children." 

Hawley took out of context some comments that Judge Jackson made when she was on a commission looking at sentencing guidelines a decade ago.  She professed to being "surprised" by the Justice Department's assertion at a hearing that child-sex offenders may not actually be pedophiles but rather people looking for company among people who are interested in child pornography. "

"So I’m wondering whether you could say that there is a — that there could be a — less-serious child pornography offender who is engaging in the type of conduct in the group experience level?" she asked at the hearing. "They're very sophisticated technologically, but they aren't necessarily that interested in the child pornography piece of it?"

As Will Weissert and Calvin Woodward of the Associate Press wrote, "Being surprised by an assertion and wanting to know more are not the same as endorsing it."

Hawley also accused Judge Jackson being a supporter of terrorists because she represented Guantánamo Bay detainees as a public defender and in private practice.  She did so because they were suspected of being terrorists and every suspect is innocent until proven guilty.  At least that was the thinking until then-Attorney General Edwin Meese explained otherwise in 1985 when asked if he thought criminal suspects should have legal protection from being coerced into confessing to a crime they're being accused of: 

"Suspects who are innocent of a crime should. But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."

Yes, this man was actually the chief law enforcement officer of the nation for three and a half years.

Meese seems like Louis Brandeis compared to Josh Hawley, whose attacks on Judge Jackson only had one effect - he picked a fight with a black woman, something Messe was smart enough never to do.

And Hawley should know that you should never, never, ever do that, especially if you're accusing a black woman of having an amoral mindset or cheapening and coarsening popular culture.  Because an attack on one black woman is an attack on all of them, and they respond like angry birds of prey on the attacker.  Ask white guys who went after Beyoncé on the cultural issue and ended up needing emergency medical care.

Okay, I'm kidding about the ER bit, but I'm sure there are a lot of honkies whose ears are still ringing from the screams they got from black women after bashing Beyoncé - louder than any sexually charged heavy-metal song they've ever listened to.  Hawley has ensured that black women will be shouting him down as he walks toward the Capitol (looks like he won't be pumping his fists in solidarity with them), they'll jam his Senate office's switchboard with angry calls, and they'll flood his Twitter account with so many negative comments that his account will crash, and possibly Twitter as well.   

The Jackson Supreme Court confirmation hearings begin today.  Expect an entertaining show but not something enlightening.  As for Josh Hawley . . . well, man, I feel sorry for you.  No, not really, I really don't.   Remember - you asked for it! 

Biden's Supreme Court Nomination

So what do I think of Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden's historic choice to be the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court?

Well, she certainly has the right qualifications.  She has been a public defender, bringing a perspective to the Court as notable as well as her racial and gender background.  She was also a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021, and during that time she famously ruled that former Trump White House Counsel Don McGahn had to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in its impeachment inquiry against Trump, saying that those "who have been subpoenaed for testimony by an authorized committee of Congress must appear for testimony in response to that subpoena" even if the President orders them not to comply, adding that "Presidents are not kings."

So, yes, she's qualified.  I would give her some advice about her Senate confirmation hearings, though . . . she ought to do something about her hair.

I'm serious.  Her hair is unpresentable.  I'm not being racist or sexist.  When President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, Bork rejected advice that he get rid of his beard, and it actually helped doom his nomination.

Honestly, would you confirm a Supreme Court nominee with a beard like that?

That Supreme Court seat ultimately went to the clean-shaven Anthony Kennedy.

Not that Bork looked all that much better clean-shaven . . . 

All that aside, Judge Jackson should be confirmed easily, because the Democrats still control the Senate.  Some people think United States District Judge Michelle Childs might have been a better choice, though, because she too has a a strong record and also had strong support from a bipartisan group of lawmakers from her home state of South Carolina that included Representative James Clyburn and also both of South Carolina's Republican senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott.

Also, she has better hair.

Though, it does look like Ketanji Brown Jackson will bring diversity to the Supreme Court, because, as far as I can tell, at least, she is a Protestant. 😉